I dug out my old Slackware CD sets. Slackware 7 (Nov 1999) withkernel 2.2.13 still splits their distribution into floppy-sizedchunks, so they definitely do support installation via floppies.You just have to mount the CD on another Linux machine, copy the files onto floppies and feed them to your laptop. That would be a reasonable choice, especially if it's an old laptop.

Slackware 8.1 (June 2002) with kernel 2.4.18 uses larger chunks that don't fit on a floppy. There is some mention of installingvia floppies, so I think it's possible, but I haven't tried it.

But ethernet, if your laptop has that, would be the best solution.

How "large" is your laptop? What's the CPU speed, amount of RAM, size of disk? How old is it?